What should a professional services firm automate first?

What belongs at the top of the list?

For most firms of 20 to 200 people the shortlist is the same four jobs, in roughly this order. The order is not fixed; your own hours decide it. But these are the places where fee-earner time most often disappears into assembling documents rather than applying expertise.

1. Write-ups and reporting

Monthly client reports, file and case notes, meeting write-ups, technical reports and management packs. These come first on most shortlists because they are the most frequent. A job done every week by every fee earner adds up faster than anything else. The inputs already exist in time records, notes and systems, and the output has a shape the firm has used for years. See client reporting, file notes and case notes and meeting notes and follow-ups.

2. Bid and proposal production

Proposals, fee proposals, tender responses and capability statements. They happen less often than reports, but each one can swallow a partner's week, and they fall on exactly the people who should be winning the work rather than formatting it. Most proposals reuse the same sections: approach, team, experience, terms. That makes them well suited to a rebuild that assembles a first draft from the firm's own library. See proposal and bid production and tender responses.

3. Client updates

Progress emails, status summaries and the follow-ups that keep clients informed between formal reports. Each one is small, which is why they are overlooked. Added up across a team, they are often a surprising block of time, and a slow update feels to the client like a slow service. They are also the easiest to draft from records that already exist: what was done, what changed, what happens next.

4. Compliance and audit evidence

Evidence packs, quality records, file reviews and the documents a regulator, accreditation body or client audit asks for. They matter a great deal and they are rarely anyone's favourite job. They rank fourth for most firms only because they are less frequent, and in some firms, such as those supervised by the SRA, ICAEW or FCA, they rank higher. See compliance evidence and audit trails.

Why does this order suit most firms?

Because it ranks jobs by three things at once: how often they happen, how much of each instance is assembly rather than judgement, and how senior the people doing them are. Reports score highly on all three. Proposals score highest on seniority but lower on frequency. Updates score on frequency but each one is short. Compliance evidence is essential but periodic.

A firm that wants to work through that reasoning for its own candidates, with a scoring method, should read how to choose a process to automate. This page gives the answer that fits most firms; that one shows how to reach your own.

What should you leave until later?

• Anything done once or twice a year. Annual reviews and one-off projects save too few hours to justify going first, however painful they are.
• Jobs where nobody agrees what good looks like. If three partners would each produce a different document, the first task is agreeing the standard. Rebuild after that.
• Work that depends on replacing a core system. If a job can only improve once the practice management system changes, it is a systems project, not a first rebuild.
• Anything that is mostly judgement. Advice, negotiation and difficult conversations are where fee earners earn their rate. The aim is to free more time for them, not to automate them.
• Jobs with no owner. A process nobody is responsible for will drift back to the old way after go-live, however well it is built.

How do you pick one from the shortlist?

Take the biggest block of hours first. Estimate, for each of the four areas, how long one fee earner spends on it in a typical week, and multiply by the number of fee earners. The largest total is usually your starting point. If two are close, pick the one that follows the same structure every time, because it will be quicker to rebuild and quicker to prove.

Then check two practical conditions before committing: that someone will own the new way of working, and that the people who do the job today can give it time during the first week of mapping. If either is missing, fix it first or pick the next job down.

The audit runs this selection for you. It asks where your fee earners' time goes, estimates the hours and their cost at your charge-out rate, and names the single process to start with.

What happens after the first one?

Once the first process is live and bedded in, the second is easier. The team has seen a job change, the review routine is established and the firm knows what it takes. Most firms go down the shortlist one job at a time, starting each only when the last has become the normal way of working. Browse every process that can be rebuilt for the wider list.